POC Coeur de Ville, La Madeleine
Citizens design the Heart of the City
How would you like La Madeleine’s city centre to be? How do you picture today’s Market Square?What is your personal use of this place? And above all, what will you do there tomorrow?
“I imagine my heart of the City”was a consultation and co-construction action that led to the decision of undertaking a development project for La Madeleine’s future city centre.
I imagine my heart of the city!
The “Heart of the City”’s consultation phase invited citizens to project themselves and imagine their ideal city centre, as a future meeting place open to everyone. Surveys, questionnaires, on-site events, participatory workshops, exhibitions and public meetings marked this phase. Following the phase, which lasted four months, three development projects, based on the recommendations received from the call for ideas, were carried out. For one month, at the start of 2019, these three scenarios entitled the esplanade, the connectionand the mirrorwere put to the vote of the citizens. The connectionwas ranked first. A canvas hall stretched between trees, a landscaped parking, a bandstand, a water line and a children’s playground are some of the features of this scenario.
Participatory governance
It is an approach that has attracted the support of everyone, young people, schoolchildren, merchants, users and users of the city centre. Since 2012, the year an extra-municipal commission dedicated to the Heart of the City was created, the City of La Madeleine has approached this future development in a spirit of “co-design”, favouring efficient and collective dynamics, encouraging all ideas and integrating the concrete use of this public space into citizens’ everyday life. This extensive consultation, carried out among La Madeleine’s citizens, affected more than 2,000 people, representing more than 8.5% of the population.
- Project holders :Ville de La Madeleine
- Designers :Extracité, MAatelier / workshop
- Stakeholders : La Madeleine’s associations, schools, merchants, Flanders College, citizens
- Photo credit : Ville de La Madeleine